came one of those stone obelisks that pompously
mark out the Russian versts, and we saw
before us, to the right hand, a long line of
high whitewashed wall, flanked by small cruel-looking
bastions at various intervals. The
prison was like every public building in Russia,
covered a vast square, and astonished one by
its huge monotonous magnificence of space.

Fresh from those dreadful facts about the
knout and the plete, I seemed to see an unrelenting
cruelty breathing through every stone
of that enormous palace of misery, and floating
round it like a pestilential atmosphere. I
smiled.

"Why do you smile?" said the professor.
"This is no laughing place. Thousands of
miserable men leave here annually for Siberia."

"My dear professor," I replied, "I could not
laugh at the sufferings of any human being;
but I was smiling because only yesterday the
governor of this very prison we see before us
refused me admission because I was an Englishman,
and because Englishmen wrote about
such places what was untrue. Now I see everything
without his permission, and when I see
the truth I can report the truth."

"That governor was a fool," said the professor.
"We Russians need not fear the daylight.
We know the abuses amongst us, and
we will correct them; but many of them are
deep-rooted. Hush, here come the prisoners!"

And there they came through the whitewashed
arch in slovenly effrontery, in heartbroken despair,
or in immovable dignity and pride. Two
and two, in careless ill-drilled array, they came,
streaming out of the prison court-yards to the
place set apart for the purpose outside the walls,
and close to where we stood beside our carriage.
They were men of all ranks and ages,
but none very old or very young. There were
youths, but no boys; old men, but none very
old. As they poured through the archway and
ranged themselves in a long double line, I observed
that they walked with a careless, resigned
air, more like that of men rather wishing to
endure a punishment that was inevitable, than
overwhelmed with a crushing sense of horror.
Of course there were various degrees and
kinds of endurance, from that of brazen
vulgar defiance to that of stealthy snake-like
hatred, and slavish patience, or calm humility.
In one face there was indifference, and in the next,
perhaps, defiance. The Russians are fatalists,
like their old enemies the Turks. For the most
part, they bend unresistingly to the blows of
Destiny, and, being under an evil, they quietly
groan and remain under it.

None of the prisoners were by any means
dirty in their dress. They were quite as clean
as the ordinary Russian soldier, and the Russian
soldier is by no means obtrusively dirty, though
not, perhaps, so mechanically clean as the soldier
of our own country. They all wore the
regulation prison great-coat, of a stiff military cut,
of a comfortable sheltering size, and of a brownish
grey cloth. The men's feet were protected
with good stout boots, reaching nearly to the
knee, and worn in the national manner over the
trousers.

As far as I had as yet observed, the prisoners
in no respect differed much, either in look or
manner, from a detachment of Russian soldiers
bound on some dangerous and ungrateful service.
They wore the same torpid, servile, indifferent
look that I had observed so often in Russian
barrack-rooms— that stupid look of mechanical
obedience so indicative of absence of all free
will and mental power. There was no look of
suffering compressing their brow, no thought of
revenge griping their lips.

It was not, indeed, till two or three of the
prisoners turned their backs to me, that I saw
that each of their coats was marked with a
yellow diamond and the initials of the city from
which they had come— S. P. for St. Petersburg,
M. for Moscow, T. for Twer, and so on.

While I was observing, the last loitering
prisoner came out of the prison, and strode
towards the head of the column, where I and
the professor stood. There was a strange
jangling clashing noise when he moved, and
when I looked down at his feet, I saw, to my
horror, that a heavy chain bound one ankle to
the other. The links of the chain were as
thick as my little finger, and they were fastened
to anklets of iron there. The weight of these
irons made the man limp heavily along, with a
peculiar straddling walk, intended, I suppose,
to prevent the irons bruising his legs.

The loiterer was a burly, robust thief, big
boned, gross, and cruel of face, with a prize-fighter's
eyes and brow, a negro's lips, and a
bull's neck. The sturdy villain stood nearly
six feet high, and smiled a greasy smile as he
looked complacently on his boots, and tucked
the ends of his green coat under his girdle, with
the air of a connoisseur in pedestrianism, determined
to be all "a-tauto."

"One would think that horrid fellow had rehearsed
his part," said the professor to me,
adjusting the left glass of his spectacle with a
practised touch of the forefinger.

The prisoners were now all drawn up in rank
and file, about one hundred and twenty. Some
were only for simple exile (porselenie), others
for more serious crimes, and travaux forces (Katorga).
Some were murderers, others forgers,
a few robbers, many incendiaries, or seditious
soldiers. In the distance were four or five
carts heaped up with baggage; amongst which
sat the female prisoners and the sick. The
women were ugly, as the lower order of Russian
women always are, and seemed stupidly insensible
to their fate.

"How few of these people will ever return!"
said the professor, who stood observing the
whole affair with that superior and imperturbable
air with which an old Londoner shows St. Paul's
to a country friend.

"How long do they take going this dreadful
journey," I asked; "and do they walk all those
thousands of versts?" The professor's answer
staggered me.

"A year, if they go from Kiow to Tobolsk;